


The Best of Winter Veil Traditions

by Triskaideka



Category: Warcraft - All Media Types, World of Warcraft
Genre: Anduin is also a TINY SMOL BAB at this age fite me if you don't agree, Anduin is very mature for his age, Background Character Death (mentioned), Gen, Holiday Traditions, LLF Comment Project, Secret Santa 2018, Warcraft Hell Secret Santa 2018, Winter Veil, Wrath Era, and a little bit of philosophy, background mourning, because I wouldn't be me if I didn't layer a couple levels of meta commentary on this, but he's still like 10-11 and there's emotional overload afoot, takes place after the Wrathgate and before ICC is breached
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-20 23:28:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17031972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Triskaideka/pseuds/Triskaideka
Summary: Anduin manages to convince his father to let him act as a cultural ambassador on a trip to Northrend. What follows includes tears, comfort, and philosophy.





	The Best of Winter Veil Traditions

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bentclaw](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bentclaw/gifts).



> ["Ashj zila gul kirasath lok ante il lok buras danashj Gul gul."](http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Quest:Return_To_Angrathar_\(Alliance\)#Notes)

Northrend was a land of contradictions, and Anduin found the Dragonblight no different. Ice and snow, wind and depthless cold overlaid the surface of the land, but from where he stood, pretending his inescapable guards had merged with the background, the lush greens of the Emerald Dragonshrine made a fascinating counterpoint to the prevailing climate. For a land gripped in winter most of the year, it did his heart good to stand in a pocket of summer-like terrain tucked away on the ocean’s edge. That there were giant dragonflies and owls flitting and swooping about made it even better.

Well, that and the dragons.

Varian had quite sensibly put his foot down over Anduin visiting any active war zones, not in the least when undead of all stripes rampaged across Northrend during the back-and-forth of the current war, but upon the confirmed death of Malygos that brought about the end of the Nexus War, his father had relaxed his concerns very slightly. Enough for Anduin to wheedle his way into visiting the shrines and Wyrmrest Temple on a short tour as cultural ambassador, and judging by how fast the permission and setup went through, the dragons thought it a worthy idea as well. Getting past Varian’s instinctive distrust of any and all dragons, no matter their flight, on the other hand….

But here he was! And there were dragons here, in a profusion of colors and temperaments, and all of them were roughly of a similar developmental age as Anduin. The cultural exchange was supposed to go both ways, and he’d learned quite a lot about different schools of draconic magic and whether being born to one flight meant you were incapable of using another flight’s magic entirely and best of all? The young drakes  _ peppered _ him with questions.

The most surprising revelation he’d found so far: dragons didn’t celebrate holidays the way mortals did. As such, he’d had to describe for them the reasoning behind not just perennial favorites like Hallow’s End and Children’s Week but also holidays that didn’t originate with Seven Kingdoms culture, like Brewfest and the Lunar Festival. To save himself the headache, Anduin had gone through chronologically from the beginning of the year, though he wasn’t sure that some of the nuances of his explanations made sense to people who natively spoke not Common but Draconic. And true, he’d grown a bit thirsty, declaiming without a break for a good little while now, but they treated each statement with a juvenile earnestness that he found endearing.

When he wandered the pathways of the shrine, a cloud of drakes of varying sizes from able to crouch comfortably in his open palm (not that they would deign to act so undignified) to lanky along the lines of horse-eating monsters out of legend would fly around his head so that he could pretend he controlled an army of them. He’d even heard some jokes in varying levels of skill with Common asking if they could keep him as a pet instead of sending him home when the holiday ended.

If he stayed too long in one place, the littlest ones grew antsy and would tussle, pinning one another on the ground or chasing one another through the air. Anduin had soon picked up a short-term habit of walking and talking to accommodate their restless energies. And, truth be told, their rambunctiousness easily infected him so that he began to forget one of the first rules of statesmanship: watching his mouth.

“And then we cut down a tree—” Anduin was saying animatedly when he saw the baby dragons from nearly all the dragonflights drooping sadly. “…oh. We, uh, we plant trees to replace what we use during the year. But you should see Stormwind when all the trees are shimmering with tinsel and reflecting back the glow of torches and streetlamps! It always makes me feel cozy even if my feet are freezing!”

“Didn’t your father ban all dragons from even entering Stormwind City?” asked one of the slightly older blue dragons suspiciously.

“Well… yes,” Anduin said. They’d already gotten him on the defensive and he wasn’t so sure he liked it. “All right, what about field trips to Dalaran to see their decorations? They do things a little differently from the way we do, but so does Ironforge for that matter.”

As one, the baby dragons looked off to the northwest where, far out of sight for one, and too far to walk in the depths of winter for another, floated the magical city of magi.

“Anyway!” Anduin said, watching with some wonder as the serpentine heads snapped back to look at him as if mechanically synchronized. “Once we have a tree picked out to decorate, we—that’s humans—decide what’s in our budget and work from there. Um, poor families usually make paper streamers by gluing pieces of papers into interlocking rings and then wind those around the outer edges of the branches, so you can see why the best trees are pines whose branches have grown in a nice cone shape.”

They followed his logic but they didn’t seem to understand the spirit behind Winter Veil. Anduin guessed there was no culture of gift giving just for the pleasure of seeing a recipient’s face light up in joy. Traditions are all well and good but the whole brilliant idea was beginning to feel more like a pointless exercise.

“Is Auntie Naliciona right? Do humans only care about themselves?” asked one of the youngest drakes, a blue. Anduin had scramble to remember that a name like that denoted a black dragoness—they’d given him a rundown of those traditions earlier but the possibilities tended to run together into a confused mass—and he found himself unsurprised that one of that flight would advance such disinformation against humans. Or that a blue would readily believe it. Going on the defensive, however, would appear impolitic and lack any rhetorical power to convince them, to boot.

Anduin needed a segue immediately, no matter how clumsy. “Well, those are the holidays we celebrate in the Alliance—”

“None of those are draenei holidays,” said another drake.

“Well, no, but they only just became our allies about three years ago—”

“You haven’t spent time as a cultural ambassador to them? That seems like poor ethics.”

So many drakes seized on that and began talking at once, in more than just Common, that Anduin lost track of what any single dragon was saying. Suddenly the profusion of drakes winging around his head appeared not so much cute as dangerous, and their refusal to act civilized and let him explain in full seemed more frustrating than anything he’d experienced in his life. He didn’t have an ‘uncle’ Bolvar to run to anymore, and he wouldn’t betray his feelings by staring off longingly in the direction of the Wrathgate.

Anduin needed only to say the word and his guards would leap into action to clear him some breathing room, but that could hurt the drakes. It wasn’t their fault in particular; they were products of their upbringing, and Light knew Anduin still had growing and learning to do himself. But none of that seemed to matter when his heart was crying out for the kind of quiet understanding he had unquestioningly received from Bolvar after interminable Council meetings and unproductive arguments with the nobles, the trade unions, and even hardened criminals begging for clemency. He ended up doing the only thing that made any sense at all right now: shielding himself and walking out of the cloud of yelling, milling dragons.

As if he had genuinely signaled to them, the guards sprang into a defensive cordon around Anduin and hurried him away while the drakes regrouped and called after him. Anduin didn’t care to put forth the effort to separate their myriad voices into sensible phrases. He let his shield drop as they marched him to a more defensible position backed up by the crashing waves of the Frozen Sea.

It was only when Anduin saw the head mage with the group get ready to teleport them all out that he found his voice again: “No!”

Everything halted, the guards looking to him to see whether he would countermand their liege-given orders to return him to Stormwind at the least sign of trouble. The mage’s arms remained in the air and a questioning look on her face. They had trusted him to know his limits with the baby dragons, knowing he would rather return their trust in him than ever betray their confidences to his father when it might trigger Varian’s overprotective instincts.

“Let’s—” he faltered, looking for inspiration. “Let’s regroup at the Temple. We wouldn’t want to insult the monarch of all dragonkind, leave-taking without the proper protocol.”

It was sound enough logic, and they went. Naturally they had to be screened by majordomos and searched both magically, by blues, and the timelines scouted to measure their intentions, by bronzes, before they were allowed within spitting distance of the dragonqueen. In her presence, Anduin went tongue-tied and shy; the forbidden nature of his father’s commands to keep dragons out of his capitol made them alluring already, but they also had a tendency to use mortal guises of surpassing beauty and handsomeness. Coupled with Alexstrasza’s grace and genuine interest in his kind, it rendered navigating that leave-taking a political quagmire in his current state.

She received them in full splendor, the jewel of the court that met upon the windy top level of the ancient temple. A red consort plus a handful of nominees for the councilors to round out the Accord all awaited her pleasure with varying levels of indifference ranging into impatience. Remembering their august ages in comparison with his own, Anduin suddenly felt insignificant.

And though he didn't mean for it to, the emotions bubbled up, bubbled over, and left him standing before that alien assembly with tears rolling down his cheeks. The wind stung at those tear tracks immediately.

“My love, would you make us private?” Alexstrasza asked.

Sound faded away until Anduin became uncomfortably aware of his irregular breathing. Wiping his eyes removed only some of the blurriness. Behind the red dragons lay a shimmering iridescent barrier, like a fanciful egg. Out of the corner of his eye, the magi minders tried not to show too much interest in the display.

“I'm sorry,” Anduin sniffled when he could find his voice.

Alexstrasza came to him and embraced him. "My dear young prince," she said, and there was no sting in the words for compared to her, he  _ was _ young, "your sensitivity to others' states is both burden and gift. Don't apologize for some of your best qualities."

Anduin let out a half-choked wheeze, his airway obstructed by mucus, and let that stand as his statement of disbelief toward her assertion that his raw emotions were any sort of good thing. She released him from the frankly reassuring hug and stepped back near Krasus once more. "I make a terrible politician and a worse cultural ambassador," Anduin mumbled at the floor.

"What makes you say that?" Alexstrasza asked.

Anduin looked at her feet rather than her face. "I couldn't make any of the drakes understand the Eastern Kingdoms' way of doing Winter Veil. It's not like there are any dragon holidays I can compare this sort of thing to."

"That's not quite true…"

"We reds celebrate the day our queen was liberated from the Dragonmaw orcs in Grim Batol," Krasus added.

Anduin knew enough about the life-changing wars that scarcely predated him to recall that Krasus, or rather the consort Korialstrasz in his proper form, had been instrumental in developing plans to free the captive reds as well as convincing the Kirin Tor—and through them the Alliance—to push into the dwarven stronghold,  even if those plans never came to fruition. A sobering thought like that was enough to give anyone pause. Anduin therefore took a good minute's time to gather his thoughts.

"When you're in Dalaran," he said to Krasus, "you celebrate Winter's Veil with the other magi, right?"

Krasus inclined his head.

Not that Varian would ever accept including a day of remembrance for the enslaved red dragons, but that didn't mean Anduin couldn't privately do that very thing. Casting about for a segue to a new topic with less focus on himself, Anduin drew on what he remembered of his history lessons again, picturing a newly-freed Alexstrasza laying waste to orcs of any allegiance.

The queen seemed content to wait him out, a mischievous smile playing upon her lips.

"Don't you still hate orcs?" Anduin blurted.

"Hate them? No," Alexstrasza said quickly.

"Philosophy," Krasus said right after her.

Alexstrasza narrowed her eyes at her consort a moment before speaking again. "I believe your philosophy of the Light speaks against hating others, since it makes for a slippery slope into acting against them, harming them. But hate is an emotion that nearly any sapient creature will feel at times, so demonizing it is as ineffective as pretending it's not there. Tell me, young prince, does the Church of the Light still maintain that love and hate are opposites?"

"Well… yes, I guess it does."

"My kind would argue instead that the opposite of love is apathy. Think on it: if you profess to hate something, of course you care. Arguably, you could even be said to care too much about that subject on some level. Yes, I hated those orcs who imprisoned me and yet my charge as Life-Binder requires that I do my best to safeguard the lives of all creatures. I cannot discharge my duties to the world if I am slain or… enslaved, therefore part of that duty requires me to hold my own life as sacrosanct.”

“That seems really selfish,” Anduin said after some thought.

“Selflessness to the point of self-annihilation is pointless,” Krasus said.

“To put it another way, a healer on a battlefield's first priority isn't to keep others alive but himself in order to maximize the amount of good he can do,” Alexstrasza clarified.

Anduin wrinkled his nose. “I guess you're right...”

Alexstrasza smiled and ruffled his hair a little. “You’ve had a long day, young prince. What do you say to meeting your father in Dalaran for some hot cocoa?”

Anduin looked up at her pleadingly. “Do I have to tell him everything that happened?”

Her smile widened until he could see teeth. “Only if you so choose; I’m not the arbiter of your relationship with King Varian.”

From there, it was a simple matter for Alexstrasza to have the protective shielding taken down, then to have a portal to Dalaran opened by one of the cohort of mages, with Anduin ushered through, and finally to pop down the hallway of the best hotel in the entire city to the rooms rented for the royal family on his own two feet. As soon as he saw his father within, Anduin broke into a run and was swept into another embrace.

“You’re back early,” Varian said, his voice rumbling soothingly in his chest to Anduin’s ear. “Did you spread holiday cheer to the dragonflights?” Though he tried to hide it, Anduin could feel the relief pouring off him.

“They won’t be appointing me ambassador to Wyrmrest Temple anytime soon,” Anduin answered.

Varian chuckled at that and released him, then retreated back to the chair he’d waited in. Anduin liked the plush appointments of the sitting room, so different from how things looked at home. Feeling rather more adult than before, he followed his father’s lead and stretched his spine and neck to see over the too-tall table where the hotel staff tended to set down their meals. No tea leavings or the like sat there now, so he could easily meet his father’s eyes.

“I know it’s not the same as going to visit a real memorial, and you have my word that I’m doing everything I can to see this war prosecuted as quickly as we’re safely able,” Varian began.

Anduin lowered his eyes, re-tracing patterns of knots and whorls in the lacquered wood. “I understand.”

“When it’s all said and done, you’ll see: we’ll have a statue commissioned in Bolvar’s memory and it will sit in place to remind everyone who sees it that he was a good, loyal man.”

A whole host of statues to commemorate the battle wouldn’t be enough, in Anduin’s mind, but it might be a start. He might have to make a list of things he wanted to see done when he ascended to the throne someday.

He slid back off the chair, came around the table to his father’s side. Summoning a smile, a sad one, he laid a hand on his father’s forearm and said, “Shall I tell you about the Winter Veil traditions we had while he was regent?”

Varian assented to this and, though it meant putting off ordering hot cocoa from the hotel staff, Anduin realized he wanted to share these delicate moments, these memories with his father more than he currently wanted a hot drink.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, we all know there's no way in hell Varian would have allowed this while there was a super dangerous war on but whatever, canon can suck it. With thanks to the usual suspects for philosophical discussions that help me refine my own thinking and untangle both plot snarls and character motivations.
> 
> (Hi yes, I'm an asshole on several levels, fa la la la la fuck your feels as my friend Ink says.)
> 
> _Addendum, 6/2/19_ : This story is part of the LLF Comment Project, which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates feedback, including:
> 
>   * Short comments
>   * Long comments
>   * Questions
>   * “<3” as extra kudos
>   * Reader-reader interaction
> 

> 
> This author replies to comments. Readers who would prefer not to receive a reply to comments, please state something like "no reply necessary" and I'll just stare with heart eyes at my inbox.


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